Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[fluffycrow]

Is it an option to get him is own girls? I am so NOT an expert, but Kosovo's sons sound like ideal roosters for that group of hens, they were accepted. Scared and wounded hens sounds pretty intolerable to me. If you can give Big Red his own group of ladies maybe closer in size to his breed or larger (to give them the advantage..lol), and let the brothers have their ladies, that may be the ideal solution. You get to keep the Rooster you love, the brothers and their hens get to go back to a peaceful existence and Big Red has girls of his own again.

The two hens he had were Turkish line Brahma. Those produced Galadriel, who went on to produce offspring of her own, drastically increasing the diversity of the group (since Perris brought up the topic with that very informative article).

I really don’t want to have a third group here. Having a third group means having a third space, which takes away from the first two. In addition, having said third group would mean total confinement for that group, in quite a limited space, something that I’m not interested in doing again. I’m trying to “retire” the bantam pen as well. Not letting them incubate any eggs of their own, and letting them live out their lives.

Big Red is always in search of more hens, and it’s very unfair for him to go from over 10 to 2, and from more than 2 acres of territory, to a couple of meters

 

[fluffycrow]

Tax, brainiac chick
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So cute !

 

[kattabelly]

Thank you! I’ve wanted to ask this for years but had no one to ask!

I often find smaller seed companies' websites are useful for random questions about regional vegetable names or history/taxonomy. Unless the vegetable in question is a brassica, that is.

I’ve also grown English (garden) peas, the ones you have to hull, but the cool weather season is a bit too short to get the full crop in.

I grew a great variety a few years back that could be eaten either podded or in the pods right up until they were very ripe - keep meaning to look back through my seed orders and empty/reused packets to see if I can work out which one it was. Have you tried dwarf varieties for your shorter season?

I've never managed to grow enough peas to store any for later use (not counting dried soup types). I sow more every year and I'm not bad at growing them - I'm just better at eating them...

 

[Mother of Chaos]

I often find smaller seed companies' websites are useful for random questions about regional vegetable names or history/taxonomy. Unless the vegetable in question is a brassica, that is.

I grew a great variety a few years back that could be eaten either podded or in the pods right up until they were very ripe - keep meaning to look back through my seed orders and empty/reused packets to see if I can work out which one it was. Have you tried dwarf varieties for your shorter season?

I've never managed to grow enough peas to store any for later use (not counting dried soup types). I sow more every year and I'm not bad at growing them - I'm just better at eating them...

lol, that’s great with the redwood.

Yeah, there’s this frenzy for reclassification due to evolutionary history and DNA sequencing revealing kinship. I’ve given up on the aster family!

And birds (Aves) are now part of Reptilia, which is actually pretty informative to me.

 

[Shadrach]

Zucchini.
I just made Steve very tasty zucchini fritters for dinner.

Steve wouldn't be the same chap that cut your trees would he?

 

[Shadrach]

@Shadrach I believe you have a Finnish friend with a chicken habit; has he perchance indicated anything to you about their connection to or independence from other Scandinavian breeds?

He has mentioned how the particular breed he keeps came into being and I expect he's mentioned which breeds they were but I can't remember what they were. They're a Land Race breed and from what I have gathered there is no "look" as such. It's the Land Race bit that interests my friend, not the breed if you understand me. To me they look like a barnyard mix, not one looking very similar to another.

 

[Shadrach]

She's doing great!
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Lovely. A full on broody monster.

 

[DobieLover]

Steve wouldn't be the same chap that cut your trees would he?

No. Just a friend.
But HTG and I are still very good friends. He's a real gem.

 

[Shadrach]

Thank you very much, Shad. Your many posts and articles have made me love the roosters here that much more, so I try to do right by them, but also by the hens. Sometimes an outside perspective is nice, as my decisions are not always as just I hope they are.

I’ll start from when Kolovos passed, when his two sons became co-heads of the free range group. About two months after his passing, a time that passed with relative peace (both boys were accepted by the hens, and ruled very fairly and maturely for their age), Big Red’s (Oriental Gamefowl) hens passed. As not to leave him by himself, he was added to the free range group. As one could imagine, he became head very quickly.

Big Red is a dream when it comes to humans, but he is very intense when it comes to other chickens, very territorial (as is the nature of his breed), and worst of all, incredibly immature and rough with his matings. As a result, the hens were not very fond of Big Red, but they accepted him regardless. Due to Big Red taking the top position in the group, and aggressively driving away the other two, both of those very mature (in temperament, not age) males have returned to a cockerel-like state, of forcefully grabbing any hen that comes near them. On top of that, Big Red is still very aggressive with his matings, a fact that I have stopped believing could change at 3 years old.

This has left every single hen in the group with some sort of feather damage. The best cases are barely noticeable, while the worst look worse than some rescued ex batts that I have seen. The hens don’t seem particularly pleased with this arrangement. In the afternoon, when they should be more active, they all huddle together in the most hard to get to parts of the property, to avoid any mating grabs.

It all came to a head three days ago, when I thought one of the senior hens went broody on a wild nest (slight parenthesis here: all senior hens started clucking a week after Kolovos’s passing, which i interpret as mourning). Turns out that she was not broody, she was just hiding in the bushes all day to avoid being seen by Big Red. The reason was that she has a big wound on her side, under her wing, from forceful mating, which I only found out when I was forced to grab her to get her bag in the coop for bed time. What was really heartbreaking was seeing her behaviour the next day, when I also had to guide her towards the coop at sundown. I had closed the coop door, and Big Red was frantically pacing back and forth. As soon as she saw him, from the other side of the wire, she crouched. Same thing happened today, when I was (once again) guiding her towards the coop. She crouched, for me this time. I interpret this as her trying to make sure her wound doesn’t get any worse, which would likely be the case if she were to run away, and be forcefully grabbed.

Please educate me if this is not what you think is happening. I was definitely giving Big Red the benefit of the doubt before seeing the wound, as I know that feather damage is rather insignificant. I really love him, I have raised him from a chick, he flies on my wrist when we he sees me, and loves wattle scratches and hugs. But I will also not sacrifice the health of the group for my sake, if you think that it comes to that.
I would really appreciate the help, even if that is a huge shouting at, for missing something very clear, and/or misinterpreting their behaviour.

Here is some tax for what I’m sure is a massive postView attachment 4183241

How a cockerel or rooster treats his hens is what decides for me whether he stays or goes. I don't really care about his behaviour towards me, mostly there is way to come to an understanding.
It reads to me that you've kept Big Red because you like him, not because the hens do and that in my view is the wrong way around.
Rips under a hens wing can happen with any rooster and it's why one should file the points off their spurs; not much, just round them off from a pin point to a pin head, yup, that little.
I expect a rooster of three years old to behave in an appropriate manner. If they're not sorting themselves out between one year old and eighteen months old I'm concerned.
You might be able to keep him if you have enough room to provide him with a coop away from the others with a couple of the hens that cope with him best. As I have often written, you're looking at an acre per tribe. I know people write everything's been fine with a lot less space and maybe it is for a while. Some people just don't see the problems in time, or at all and end up with dead or badly injured males and unhappy hens.
Eat or rehome Big Red and see how the other two get sorted.

 

[Shadrach]

I should add that of course the cockerels are adorable, so I'm not complaining
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But I will probably have to cull some of the old guard roos if the new blood plan is to work.

They are rather splendid even at that age.